


Skinny Chai

by Kalanon (Kalael)



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, Mild substance abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-02-05
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:28:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalael/pseuds/Kalanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kink meme fill.</p><p>He closes his eyes, lowers the mug, and then downs the coffee in two large gulps. It feels slimy as it slides down his throat and the bitter aftertaste lingers for hours. </p><p>(Jack tries to use coffee as a coping mechanism for a bad breakup.  It goes as well as one might expect.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This needs to be cleaned up but I'll worry about that after I get the next chapter going.

There’s a shiny film like oil over the surface of the coffee and Jack stares at it uncertainly. It looks like it’s been sitting there for days. It probably has. He hasn’t been home in a week and from the looks of things, Pitch hasn’t been back in a while either. The thought forms a knot in his stomach and he tries to breathe slowly. In. Out.

The mug is cold to the touch and Jack presses the white porcelain to his mouth, the rim just under his nose, and if he concentrates hard enough he can smell the faint aroma of the expensive African blend that Pitch insists on using, even though Jack can hardly taste the difference between that and Folgers instant with how much cream and sugar he puts into his coffee. Pitch drinks his black, of course. Kozmotis Pitchiner despises most sweet things. Jack has grown to associate the smell of coffee with him.

 

He inhales through his nose and the coffee barely smells like anything (barely smells like Pitch). He closes his eyes, lowers the mug, and then downs the coffee in two large gulps. It feels slimy as it slides down his throat and the bitter aftertaste lingers for hours. Jack leaves the mug unwashed in the kitchen sink and tries to remember the feel of Pitch’s mouth on his own, the taste of Ethiopian Dark Roast on their tongues and the coffeemaker whirring in the kitchen. 

In the morning he rolls off the couch and starts reading the instructions for the expensive espresso machine, wondering when the lease on the apartment will run out and if he can find a cheap apartment in time. He tries not to think about the empty bedroom closet and the bare study, the missing shoes at the door and the fact that he is too scared to sleep in his (their) bed.

The other set of keys are on the counter and Jack drinks his coffee black.

\---

There are small reminders all over the apartment. Pitch’s alarm still goes off at 6am sharp and Jack has to wander into the bedroom to turn it off. There’s a can of shaving cream on the bathroom counter and Pitch left a bottle of shampoo in the shower. There’s a tie in the trashcan in the study and it’s the only piece of clothing that Pitch left behind but there’s a splotch of blood on the corner so Jack doesn’t touch it. Jack sips his coffee as he sits on the living room couch. The TV is off but he’s certain that if he turns it on the TiVo will have recorded the Hitchcock movie Psycho along with a week’s worth of How It’s Made.

He downs his coffee then gets up to pour another cup. He hasn’t slept in 21 hours.

The next morning at six am he leaves a second mug of black coffee on the counter before going to the corner store to pick up a donut for breakfast. He still hasn’t slept and when he shows up for work at the elementary school he TA’s at, he’s almost turned away.

“It’s not healthy, Jack.” Ms. Tooth frets but Jack won’t leave, so she sets him to work on grading 2nd grade math tests. He barely remembers what two times two is.

Ms. Tooth sends him home and Jack finds the coffee on the counter, cold and untouched. He downs it. The world gets hazy and he thinks he can hear knocking on the door and for a moment he thinks it’s over, that Pitch has come home, but it’s just his heart in his ears.

He wakes up on the kitchen floor, the porcelain mug shattered next to his head and he has a migraine that makes him vomit into the kitchen sink. Jack turns on the faucet and sits on the floor with his face in his hands until the pounding stops, and then he makes more coffee. The coffee jar is almost empty and Jack dumps the extra grounds into the bed, under the sheets, and that night he crawls onto his side and breathes in the smell of dark coffee.

He doesn’t dream of anything. In the morning he realizes that his cellphone has been dead for hours. There are three voicemails and twelve texts, but none of them are from Pitch. Jack sends curt responses, cancels all his plans for the day, and stays in bed until he can’t smell the coffee anymore.

It’s the start of the second week and his hands won’t stop shaking, they won’t be still, but Jack is up at 6am on the dot and the coffee is boiling and dark and it scalds his tongue so that he can’t taste a thing. He can’t smell the coffee anymore but that’s just fine. He doesn’t really feel a thing. The shower is so hot that his skin is bright red for an hour afterwards but it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. There are four mugs on the counter and Jack doesn’t remember leaving them there but they’ve all gone cold. He drinks every last drop.

Jack passes out in the kitchen again but this time he wakes up in bed, a blurry figure hanging over him and for the first time in days Jack breaks down and sobs into the pillow (it doesn’t smell like coffee, doesn’t smell like Pitch).

“Pitch?” He chokes, deliriously reaching out to the face above him, but the nose is too flat and the lips too full. “Aster.” He tries not to sound disappointed but all he can think about are the coffee mugs on the counter and the alarm that always goes off at 6am.

“Shush. You rest. I’ll call your uncle.” Jack is too tired to protest verbally but he holds Aster’s hand until he falls asleep.

For first time in two weeks he dreams, the smell of turpentine and chocolate banging down the doors in his head until he’s alone in the kitchen with a smashed coffeemaker


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know you’re a little too into a prompt when you start researching the health hazards of coffee ahaha.

Jack sits at the kitchen counter, a cup of water in his hands and the espresso machine unplugged in the corner. He won’t make eye contact with Aster, who is tsk’ing at the contents of the fridge and trying to make a breakfast of sorts. Jack hasn’t gone grocery shopping in days. They end up with butter on slightly stale toast and Jack can barely swallow it down. He sways in his seat, and Aster sits down next to him to wind a steadying arm around his shoulders.

Jack shouldn’t lean into him, shouldn’t be grateful for the contact, but he rests his head on Aster’s shoulder and takes in the smell of paint that clings to Aster’s clothes and skin. Pitch hates Aster and Aster hates him in return but Pitch isn’t here anymore. Jack doesn’t take much pleasure in this small rebellion, and he stops breathing through his nose. The odor of the paint is so strong that he can taste it in the back of his throat. It nearly overpowers the coffee that has stained itself into his body.

“Want to explain?” Aster asks. Jack feels the words more than he hears them, the top of his head pressed against Aster’s throat and the vibrations travelling through his skull like a balm for his aching head.

“Not really.” Jack mutters.

“Wrong answer.” Aster’s body rumbles with disapproval and Jack nervously pulls away. He can feel too much and it’s claustrophobic. Aster realizes his mistake and lightly squeezes Jack’s shoulder before shifting away to give him space. “I haven’t heard much from you since y’ left my place a few weeks back. I’m worried, Jack. Even your landlord is worried, gave me a spare to get into the apartment to check on you.” That explained the second set of keys on the counter. Jack hasn’t touched Pitch’s keys since he got home.

He wants coffee.

“I’m just busy.” Jack lies, half shrugging as he looks down at the counter top. There are circles of dried coffee all over the granite. Pitch would kill him for leaving it such a mess. He would have to wipe it down later. His hands are shaking and he folds them in his lap to keep them still.

“Try again.” Aster sighs and Jack grimaces at the counter. He has never been very good at lying. He wears his heart on his sleeve and Aster has always been able to see right through him, clear as ice.

“There’s nothing to explain, Aster.” There really isn’t. It’s not as though Jack and Pitch’s break-up is a secret, because though they kept their life together mostly private they were both prone to dramatics when the tension was high. “I’ve just been a little…out of it.”

“And that’s why you drank so much coffee that you passed out?” Aster doesn’t look convinced.

“….Yeah?” Jack tries weakly but Aster’s stern glare makes him shrink down in his chair. “Sorry. I really didn’t mean to worry anyone.”

“We’re worried anyway, kid.” Aster sounds tired and fond and exasperated and it’s all Jack can do to keep his eyes trained on the coffee stains.

He doesn’t want things to change. He doesn’t want Aster to fix things. He wants Pitch to come home, he wants to turn back time, he wants to come home and find empty mugs in the sink and coffee canisters in the pantry. Aster shifts beside him as though he’s realized that the atmosphere has changed, that Jack is shutting down again and there are sepia tones at the edge of his vision like watered down espresso.

“Don’t be a stranger.” Aster says, finally getting up to leave, finally leaving Jack alone. He gives Jack a one-armed hug and then clumsily pulls on his boots. He’s unintentionally noisy, everything he does is somehow loud without meaning for it to be and the unmistakable signs of life in the apartment have Jack cringing long after the door shuts.

He sits in silence until the noise settles down, leaving nothing but echoes of months gone by in the apartment. Jack plugs the coffee machine back in. The Ethiopian Dark Roast is gone (buried into the sheets of the bed) but Jack’s untouched Folgers rests in the back of the lazy susan.

He takes it black and admits to the empty kitchen that maybe the expensive shit that Pitch buys is better after all.

\--

He’d never cared so much about cleanliness before. Pitch had always railed on him about it, telling him to do his dishes or put away his shoes or make the bed. Jack is messy where Pitch was organized and maybe that’s why it feels like Pitch might still be coming home. Pitch’s things are gone but they are little things, as though he’s gone on a business trip and he’ll be back at the end of the week. Jack puts his own belongings away without prompting and wonders how he’d never noticed the missing things before. They’re all he can fixate on now.

Pitch has left his favorite mug and Jack finds it stowed away in the study, stained at the bottom and slightly chipped and it’s that awful pottery piece that Jack had made when he was teaching arts and crafts to kids at the community center. Jack washes it until the glaze is shining and when he returns at night to find the mug gone cold, he swipes it off the counter and hears it shatter on the floor.

He regrets the action immediately afterwards and he cuts his hands on the shattered clay as he picks up the pieces. The coffee stings as it gets into the small wounds on his fingers but it isn’t until morning when he’s making two mugs of coffee that he realizes that maybe he’s going a little crazy. Aster has texted him every hour and Jack has only responded once or twice just to make sure that he won’t come barging in again. However, he forgot that Aster had called his uncle.

“Jack!” Uncle North is extremely vocal. It’s hard to ignore him, though it’s different from the way that Aster makes himself known. Aster doesn’t talk much but he is always moving, always doing something.

Pitch was never that loud, never that lively. Jack struggles to get used to what can only be described as noise pollution that pervades his home. North announces that he can only stay for a few days because as a custom toy-maker he cannot be away from his workshop for long. Jack just wants him to stop being so boisterous. Aster calls that night and Jack hesitates, misses the first call, then picks up when Aster tries again.

“How are you doing?” Aster asks kindly and Jack groans with genuine exhaustion because North is like a giant child. Aster laughs.

For the first time in days Jack doesn’t have to pretend when he smiles, even though no one is there to see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession: this story is pretty self-indulgent when it comes to the writing style. Sorry if it doesn't make sense or if the tenses suddenly switch because when I write these chapters I sort of go at it like I'm hyped on caffeine ahaha.


End file.
